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Poor turnout

Shri Manish Tewari said that
the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir met the Prime Minister today. After the
meeting we heard from the Chief Minister of J&K but of course, we heard
nothing either from the Prime Minister or the PMO. One remark that the Chief
Minister of J&K made during her brief interaction with the Press possibly
summed up the entire essence of the meeting with the Prime Minister better than
anything else.

She said in a sense that we are where Shri Vajpayee left us.
There could not have been a more demeaning indictment of a complete lack of
policy which the NDA-BJP Government and the Prime Minister has quashed the
situation in J&K. Nothing evidences this more than the extremely poor
turnout in the Srinagar by poll.

The postponement of the Parliamentary by poll in Anantnag, the
continuing tension on the Indo-Pakistan border, the fragile internal security
situation in the Kashmir Valley and the ever increasing and deepening
contradictions between the BJP-PDP alliance Government in J&K, even after
the worst phase of militancy in Kashmir between 1989 and 1996 when the Assembly
elections were held in that State, in October and November of 1996, the poll
percentage was 53.92%. When elections were held again in 2002,there was NDA-BJP
Government at that point in time, the poll percentage was still 43.70%. These
are figures from the Election Commission, these are not my figures.

So we would like to request the NDA - BJP Government, since
it is a sensitive issue I am deliberately refraining from using the word
‘demand’, that it is high time that the Central Government articulated its
policy towards the situation in Kashmir in clear terms. Monday, 24th April,
2017